


Murakami

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Bleach
Genre: F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-10
Updated: 2010-02-10
Packaged: 2017-10-07 03:49:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He never thought Orihime was the kind to cheat on her boyfriend. Written in March 2005.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Murakami

  


**[Haruki]**

They shared a couple of classes during their first year and Ishida has forgotten all about him. He had helped with some of his papers and they even stopped and say "hi" in the corridors from time to time, when they happened to meet.

They had also been together in a college threatre play (a version of Ibsen´s Dolls House in a fifties setting) for which Ishida had designed the wardrobe and atrezzo and Haruki has been assistant director. He seemed to liked Ishida´s quiet going better than he did the actors´ loudness and loose behaviour.

Among the students Haruki was one of the few who actually considered Ishida a nice person; the boy with the highest marks was always hated.

Ishida was that boy.

Haruki was clear-minded, clear-eyed, and Ishida never thought he was the kind of boy Orihime would be interesed in.

You´ve got one new message: "Mmm, Ishida-kun? I guess you are not home. Mmm, I guess not, otherwise I wouldn´t be talking to a machine. It´s been so long since I´ve called you Ishida-kun. Too long since I´ve called you anything at all. Is that why you left so fast the other day, with Haruki-kun and me? I don´t know. It was weird seeing you. But good-weird. Good-weird like I wouldn´t mind seeing you again. In fact good-weird like I do want to see you again. I didn´t know you still had this number. I just wanted to say hi, I guess."

Ishida entered his flat and did not turn on the lights, guided by familiarity from room to room.

The house was oddly devoid of almost anything, cold like the dettached style of the writers he used to read. At twenty-one Ishida had Murakami second hand paperbacks on his night table, a half-time job at the library of a tourism centre and on Wednesday he would have to turn in a paper on Nomonhan for his 20th century History class. He was sure he would get an A, as always.

He sat on his bed, in silence, bedroom lights off as well, and water boiling in the kitchen, for the soup.

Thinking about Haruki´s easy and innocent smile when he introduced Orihime as his girlfriend. Ishida´s latest class of the day had been called off, otherwise he would have never met them by the college gardens.

(if she hadn´t known Orihime he´d say they made a pretty good couple; Haruki with his messed up black hair, his worn out jeans and his dreamy green eyes, his arm lazily circling Orihime´s waist)

"I didn´t know you knew each other," he said, the next day, meeting Ishida by chance or on purpose at the dining hall. He grinned in that generous way orphans often do.

Haruki asked if it was okay. If there was anything he should know. If there was any problem.

"No," Ishida shook his head. He was a pretty good liar. "It´s just that it surprised me, nothing more."

This time Haruki smiled with his whole face, eyes lighting up.

At twenty-one Haruki lived with his grandfather, his only family, in a flat with leaks in Shibuya, near the Aoyama Hospital, he kept old sports magazines under his bed, and had a red-haired girlfriend.

Ishida listened to Orihime´s message on his machine a couple of times; then, instead of erasing it, he torn the cassette with his own hands.  


**[Ishida]**

She was smiling over her milkshake, childishly.

"Ishida-kun is so smart," she said. "You got into Tõdai."

His name felt like an old postcard on her lips.

Her hair was gotten shorter but apart from that she was basically the same girl Ishida had terribly fallen in love with.

Ishida wondered if she was still crazy.

Her milkshake was strawberry flavoured. He had ordered coffee, no sugar.

"Do you know anything about the, uh, the others?" Looking through the window, people taking out their umbrellas, the waitress talking to the guard, and Ishida playing uninteresed in her answer.

"You really left very quicky after graduation," she reflects, talking to herself, a pang of missed chances stinging under her ribs.

It rained that day, too. Graduation day, and while everybody was having their yearbooks signed Ishida was already out of there.

"I guess."

"Well, Sado-kun had various jobs after school; it´s been a while since I saw him last. Both Tatsuki and Kurosaki scored high in their college exams -not as high as Ishida-kun but..." She took a sip. "They go to college together."

Ishida nodded.

He did not want to know much more.

Those people, the most important in his life once, and forever, seemed alien now. Like he never knew them at all. Their name evoked memories of things happened to another person, and still at the sound of them the old Ishida stirred inside him, like a caged animal waiting to be released, dangerous, wild. Free.

When he asked her if she still had her powers Orihime did not answer him.

Half-an hour later, when a car almost run over Ishida, under the rain, he got his answer.

The took the Marunouchi line back to his place.

"Nobody´s been here in years," he said as soon as he opened the door, thinking it odd that she was going to see where he lived.  


**[Orihime]**

As soon as they enter his flat Orihime remembers how much she has missed Ishida. Maybe it is the setting, crowded with books but clean and neat and very Ishida-like, maybe it is his smell on everything there (she has not expected to remember it but she does, it all appears clearly before her, his scent of soap and fresh fruit and kindness and loneliness) or just his comforting presence.

She remembers she was never afraid, when Ishida was with her.

He hands her a towel and leads to the kitchen.

"The light in the bathroom doesn´t work. Sorry."

Orihime imagines with fondness how he has to comb his hair in darkness, the mirror in from of him reflecting only darkness. Still, his hair was nothing if perfect.

So perfect she wants to touch it, and leans, her back against the sink, towards him, one hand before her. His hair is soft and thick, spreading like velvet around her fingers.

Orihime tiptoes and brings her lips to his.

"What about Haruki?"

The words escape without him having any control over them. He watches Orihime slipping into a pained face.

"S-sorry."

He has always been hopeless so he had never imagined this scenario.

He does not know what to do.

It´s her who places her arms around his body and embraces him, resting her head on the hollow of his neck, her forehead to his chin, his lips full of her hair and his eyes full of her name.

He is much larger than her; still feels like Orihime is stronger, with her little hands like paws curling twisting around Ishida´s shirt, her feet on the ground, holding him still.

The palm of her hand placed against the elegant curve of his back.

Ishida feels faint, world swaying.

Reading his mind, she says: "I will catch you."

And she kisses him again.

This time it´s deeper, her tongue tickling inside his mouth, resting the tip on the palate. He feels her hand slide onto the back of his neck, as if she was afraid of his escape. Silly, Ishida thinks, blood drumming into his ears and half-hyterical from the adrenaline, I´m not going anywhere.

She traces the line of his wrist and palm with her fingers.

"Do you still miss it?"

"Sometimes," he admits. "Only sometimes. When I feel a tingling in my fingertips I cannot explain, where my ancient power used to lie."

Of course there is something in him that remembers, not only the tips of his fingers; he remembers the faint distinctively smell of Soul Society, the touch of stolen shinigami clothes against his skin, how she said "thank you", and, above all, the numbness of power flowing, dripping out of his body. And how he could do nothing about it.

It hurts to remember; memory hurts more than absence, it´s more permanent than defeat.

It hurts so much that Ishida closes his eyes and buries himself in her hair, into her neck, inside her warmth. When he opens his eyes Orihime is rolling his t-shirt above his navel.

"Come," she says, taking his hand in hers (palm to palm, life line against life line, Ishida hopes that if gypsy could read them she would augur a future together), guiding him like this was her house.

There is noise outside, passing cars and cats looking for food in blocked alleyways, but inside they say nothing more.

She sits on the small bed and places his hands on her shoulders. Ishida clutches her clothes and begins massaging the muscles around her neck because he fears she´d notice his hands are really trembling.

They both know what happens next, but Ishida falters, he wonders if he should tell Orihime he has never been with a girl.

Before he has time to think about it she falls back on the bed, her lips drawing him as well.

There is a moment of awkwardness when he gets stuck with his belt but she works it out with a reassuring smile. Everytime Orihime feels his nervousness (she can feel it on his skin, she knows Ishida on a molecular level, ever has, even in the days when he was just the boy in the class who sewed so well) she grabs his head with her hands and makes him look at her. Really look at her.

She hopes he can see half of what is there.

He puts his weight on her and before he even notices everything is over.

A feeling of warmth and tenderness lingers, though, even when he rolls over his back, away from her. He wants to hold her but he doesn´t really know how, or maybe he is afraid.

(for a moment he reflects that at twenty-one Orihime keeps her powers, is cheating on her boyfriend and still drinks strawberry milkshakes)

His cheeks burn, and his skin aches everywhere he and Orihime are still touching.

She lays by him, shoulders against the other. Time has been swallowed suddenly, for before there was light -if faint and fading- and now only the green and orange flickering of distant streetlights filtered through the blinds. The only sounds heavy heartbeats and soft rain against the window.

Not a hint of shyness, Orihime props herself with one elbow, facing Ishida. Her features blur in the darkness and in the shock of the afterglow. The breathing returns gradually to Ishida, evening under his lungs, like a wounded animal.

"I did not think you were weird. Back then," she puts up her hair with a gesture Ishida does not recognize from his memories. "Though that was everybody said about you. I didn´t. I thought you were normal."

He hides under the sheets, suddenly very self-aware.

"Years later, remembering those days, I realized that you were, indeed, not normal. I was glad to discover it." She smiles, like only she can do, exactly how Ishida remembered: the same exact smile that made him fall in love with her. "There are too many normal people. There is only one Ishida-kun."

She bends to kiss him.

Swiftly, quick, a butterfly kiss.

Orihime wishes he could see himself as beautiful as she sees him now.

"There is only one Ishida-kun," she repeats.


End file.
